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malsperanzaSo, my sometime squeeze asked me the other day if X, hero of the tale I am very busily (not) writing, was based on him.
Considering that X is a cross-dressing, amoral seducer whose sexual orientation is unclear and who has other highly gendered and complicated secrets, the question unnerved me.
The more so because it occurs to me that in some sense the answer is Yes. And weirdly enough, I had never realized it before. Fortunately, I think he was flattered, in his own strange way. Or amused, at any rate. As he pointed out, it would have been worse if I had suddenly realized that X was a self-portrait.
Still, cannot decide if I should be worried a) because I apparently view Significant Other as cross-dressing, amoral seducer or b) because I am so pitifully oblivious that I don't even notice the obvious source of the character I think I am inventing. Either way, I feel that I ought to be worried.
Elsewhere in the news, lately my apartment building has been irritating the hell out of me.
I've lived here for a long time and watched the population shift as the neighborhood went upscale. We used to have loads of musicians and writers and university professors and tiny ancient German Jewish ladies. There was a couple who had two grand pianos in their living room (and nothing else; it was a small living room). The mother and daughter violinists who had chamber groups in every evening to play Schubert and Mendelsohn. The summer when the actor upstairs sublet his place to John Rubenstein, son of the pianist Artur Rubenstein, and no slouch himself as a musician (not to mention his other talents). He was working on Broadway at the time, and when he practiced I used to want to bang on the ceiling with a broomstick and shout, "louder!"
There was the veryveryold Miss Dash, who had in her youth been a Ziegfeld Girl, later a Broadway dresser, and in her eighties a cabaret singer, who made her own hats and drank like a Marine and had great legs and came staggering home every night from her gig at Don't Tell Mama's with her lipstick askew. She had a voice like a cement mixer full of honey. There was the man whose brother had been married to Yoko Ono, and the brothers who shot a cop when he came to break up a dispute they were having with their mother, all three of them mad as coots.
Now we just have overprivileged bankers and lawyers and Wall Streeters, boring, rigid, whining types who complain because the building staff isn't obsequious enough and the mailboxes are too small. They don't like it when children play in the lobby, snarky bastards.
Still, occasionally I am pleasantly surprised. Thus, in the elevator this morning:
Me (reading morning paper): Must be a slow news day: the Times has made a front-page story out of vultures nesting in Virginia.
Neighbor from one floor above me: Vultures?
Me: Yes, a large flock, causing messes and upsetting the townsfolk.
Neighbor: In Virginia? Are they Republicans?
Me: Not that part of Virginia.
Neighbor from two floors down: Are they endangered?
First neighbor: No, unfortunately.
Me: Wait, vultures or Republicans?
Second neighbor: The anteater is endangered.
Me: And the fruit bat.
(Elevator reaches lobby)
Considering that X is a cross-dressing, amoral seducer whose sexual orientation is unclear and who has other highly gendered and complicated secrets, the question unnerved me.
The more so because it occurs to me that in some sense the answer is Yes. And weirdly enough, I had never realized it before. Fortunately, I think he was flattered, in his own strange way. Or amused, at any rate. As he pointed out, it would have been worse if I had suddenly realized that X was a self-portrait.
Still, cannot decide if I should be worried a) because I apparently view Significant Other as cross-dressing, amoral seducer or b) because I am so pitifully oblivious that I don't even notice the obvious source of the character I think I am inventing. Either way, I feel that I ought to be worried.
Elsewhere in the news, lately my apartment building has been irritating the hell out of me.
I've lived here for a long time and watched the population shift as the neighborhood went upscale. We used to have loads of musicians and writers and university professors and tiny ancient German Jewish ladies. There was a couple who had two grand pianos in their living room (and nothing else; it was a small living room). The mother and daughter violinists who had chamber groups in every evening to play Schubert and Mendelsohn. The summer when the actor upstairs sublet his place to John Rubenstein, son of the pianist Artur Rubenstein, and no slouch himself as a musician (not to mention his other talents). He was working on Broadway at the time, and when he practiced I used to want to bang on the ceiling with a broomstick and shout, "louder!"
There was the veryveryold Miss Dash, who had in her youth been a Ziegfeld Girl, later a Broadway dresser, and in her eighties a cabaret singer, who made her own hats and drank like a Marine and had great legs and came staggering home every night from her gig at Don't Tell Mama's with her lipstick askew. She had a voice like a cement mixer full of honey. There was the man whose brother had been married to Yoko Ono, and the brothers who shot a cop when he came to break up a dispute they were having with their mother, all three of them mad as coots.
Now we just have overprivileged bankers and lawyers and Wall Streeters, boring, rigid, whining types who complain because the building staff isn't obsequious enough and the mailboxes are too small. They don't like it when children play in the lobby, snarky bastards.
Still, occasionally I am pleasantly surprised. Thus, in the elevator this morning:
Me (reading morning paper): Must be a slow news day: the Times has made a front-page story out of vultures nesting in Virginia.
Neighbor from one floor above me: Vultures?
Me: Yes, a large flock, causing messes and upsetting the townsfolk.
Neighbor: In Virginia? Are they Republicans?
Me: Not that part of Virginia.
Neighbor from two floors down: Are they endangered?
First neighbor: No, unfortunately.
Me: Wait, vultures or Republicans?
Second neighbor: The anteater is endangered.
Me: And the fruit bat.
(Elevator reaches lobby)
